


Thunderbolt and Lightning

by onward_came_the_meteors



Series: October 2020 Prompts [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Tower, Bruce Banner & Thor Friendship, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, POV Third Person, Post-Avengers (2012), Team Dynamics, Thor Needs a Hug (Marvel), can be read as pre-relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:15:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26819425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onward_came_the_meteors/pseuds/onward_came_the_meteors
Summary: Thor is losing control of his powers.Good thing Bruce definitely isn't afraid of thunderstorms.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Thor
Series: October 2020 Prompts [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947679
Comments: 4
Kudos: 41





	Thunderbolt and Lightning

**Author's Note:**

> Day 4, for the prompt: "collapsed building." 
> 
> (Contains a blink-and-you-miss it reference to Bruce's childhood at the very beginning, but nothing major)

Bruce Banner wasn’t afraid of thunderstorms.

Of course he wasn’t. He was an adult, after all—not the little kid who’d hidden under his bed at night because every crack and boom sounded like the slamming of the front door or the heavy footsteps coming up the stairs and shaking the floorboards.

No, he’d outgrown that by now. Every grainy newspaper photo of a rain-drenched Hulk roaring up at a thick and dark sky notwithstanding. 

The only problem was, he currently shared a tower with Thor, the Asgardian god of thunder.

Who didn’t seem to be controlling his powers as well as he used to.

* * *

The first time happened right after a mission, when the green had barely faded from Bruce’s skin before Clint was yelling through the coms, a garbled message about somebody getting captured.

They didn’t need to do a headcount to determine that it was Thor, and in another half hour that felt like it had lasted  _ much  _ longer, Steve and Tony had returned from the enemy base—the one they’d  _ thought  _ was completely emptied—with a half-conscious Thor bleeding from the leg and leaning heavily on Steve’s shoulder.

Bruce had immediately risen to his feet, or tried to, getting tangled in the blanket Natasha had unceremoniously flung over him after his transformation and nearly falling on his face in the hard-packed dirt. The second try proved to be the charm, however, and a few seconds later he was hovering behind the others as they helped Thor into the quinjet.

“Is everybody in?” Steve asked as Tony shouted an order at JARVIS to raise the door.

“No, we left Clint outside.” Natasha’s sarcasm wasn’t as biting as usual, watching Thor with concern in her eyes.

Tony reappeared at her side, out of the suit and his hair messed up from being in the helmet. “Well, I’m sure S.H.I.E.L.D. will understand.” He frowned. “So what happened here?”

The quinjet had lifted into the air and started on its course—steered by JARVIS—back to the Tower before Thor managed to speak. He was lying unnaturally still on the row of seats, his breathing shallow as though it hurt to move.

“I was taken by surprise,” he finally said, and Bruce suspected that he had waited so long just as much because of a reluctance to admit what had happened than wariness of the pain moving would cause. “I don’t remember much of it—this was after we blew up most of the base, but there was apparently a hidden set of rooms—”

“Yeah, those are blown up now too, don’t worry,” Tony assured him.

“Good.” Thor peered down at the still-bleeding wound in his leg. Apparently the Asgardian healing hadn’t quite kicked in yet. “I’m not sure what happened exactly—I was knocked out, probably, but—” A wave of his hand. “Yes. Then I woke up to this one almost hitting me in the face.” He pointed to Steve.

“I told you, it was dark,” Steve muttered. 

“Mm.” Thor’s eyes slid shut briefly before popping open again as he groaned and reached at his leg wound.

Bruce caught his hand and gently moved it away. “Right, this needs to get wrapped up before we do anything else. Clint, can you—”

The medical kit soared across the quinjet and would have smacked him in the face if Steve hadn’t caught it and handed it to him—with a pointed look at Clint that the archer cheerfully ignored.

“Thanks,” Bruce said under his breath. He started to unzip the kit. “Is everyone else okay, by the way? I don’t, uh, remember a whole lot from the fight.”

Natasha nodded, perched on the seat a few feet away from Thor’s head. “Unless you count Stark getting thrown into a tree twice.”

“Wait, twice?” Steve asked, turning around to face Tony. “I only saw the one.”

“Next time I’ll be sure to make all my mistakes when you’re there to watch, Cap.” 

Bruce peeled away a strip of ripped and blood-soaked fabric away from Thor’s wound and winced. “What  _ happened? _ ” It wasn’t the worst injury he’d ever seen—far, far, from it—but it somehow seemed worse just from the fact that it belonged to Thor—who was nearly as indestructible as the Hulk and maybe even immortal from the way he talked sometimes, but evidently that didn’t mean he couldn’t still bleed.

He was bleeding rather a lot, actually; there was a red stain growing on the seats of the jet.

“Still don’t remember,” Thor grumbled before looking up at all of them. “Listen, it’ll heal by itself soon enough, there’s no reason for you all—”

“I don’t know about that, Thor, this looks like it needs stitches.” Bruce tried to make his voice as apologetic as possible, but Thor was already shaking his head and pressing his hands above the wound in his leg, either in an attempt to stop the bleeding or to deny its existence altogether.

_ God, he’s worse than Tony. _ Bruce sighed and glanced around at the others. “Do you mind… ?”

Natasha immediately slid off the seat without a word, joining Clint in the back of the jet and beginning a whispered conversation. Tony was next, making a big show of checking the screen on his watch before he walked across the jet, scooped up the Iron Man suit—which was now in suitcase form—and started fiddling with something on the outside.

Steve stayed there the longest, a furrow in his brow as he watched the blood steadily dripping onto the floor, but finally stepped away when Tony leaned over and yanked on his arm.

Only Bruce and Thor were left in their little corner of the jet, and Bruce waited another moment before speaking again.

“I’d really feel better if you just let me do this.”

Thor made a groaning sound. His eyes were closed again.

“Come on, this can’t be the first time you’ve had to have an injury stitched up.”

One of Thor’s shoulders shrugged infinitesmally. “Asgardians aren’t as fragile as you mortals.”

“No one’s calling you fragile.”

“I know that. Just…” Thor let out a long breath. “Fine. Go ahead.”

“Thank you.”

Bruce moved Thor’s hands away from the injury for a second time, and that’s when he stopped. “Thor… there’s shrapnel in here.”

“Yep.” Thor sounded strained.

_ No wonder he didn’t want me to see.  _ Bruce poked through the medical kit again, picking out what he needed with a shake of his head, and got to work. He did not envy Thor’s position right now, but hopefully he could finish in enough time to allow him to rest before they reached the Tower.

Removing the smaller pieces of shrapnel—it looked like some kind of metal, maybe from whatever weapon the enemy had stabbed him with—was hard enough, but when Bruce started on one of the larger chunks, Thor tensed up, his fists clenching.

“I know, I know,” Bruce muttered. “I’m sorry, I wish we had some kind of painkiller that would work on you—if something like that exists, Tony’s probably working on—”

_ BOOM. _

Thunder rolled from outside the quinjet, and Bruce felt his heart jump into his throat.

In another instant, rain was slamming against the windows and the wind was picking up, causing the jet to lurch from side to side.

Over by the wall, Tony dropped the suit on the floor and jumped to his feet, racing to the front of the jet.

“JARVIS, give me back the controls!”

“How high are we?” Steve asked, chasing after him.

“Higher than we should be in an electrical storm!” Tony slid into the pilot’s seat, his hands flying over the instrument panel. Steve hovered behind him, staring out the front window at the rain now flooding over them. Natasha and Clint were on their feet as well, but hadn’t moved from the back of the jet.

“Banner?”

Thor’s voice, drained as it was, still made Bruce jump. He realized he’d been standing completely frozen, his eyes fixed on the side window and the lightning now splitting across the sky as another round of thunder rumbled loud enough to echo in his ears.

He picked up the medical kit from where he’d dropped it— _ when did that happen? _ —and forced himself to focus on Thor’s face. “Sorry, just… yeah, I’ll get back to it now.” His hands really needed to stop shaking, it would be very medically frowned upon to stitch up Thor like that.

Thor looked like he wanted to say something else, but his face had gone paler than usual and tight with pain as blood beaded and dripped down his leg, welling in a pool on the seat. He squeezed his eyes closed, and more thunder boomed as though in response.

_ Of all the times to get caught in a downpour. _ Bruce took in a deep breath and tried to ignore the Other Guy’s grumblings in his head as he bent back down over Thor’s wound.

The storm had tapered off to a light sprinkling by the time they got back to the Tower, but it had still left Bruce so unsettled that only half of Thor’s stitches were done.

* * *

The second time happened a few days later—or rather, nights, when Bruce jolted awake in a panic, staring around his room wildly.

Something had woken him up, and although his years on the run had made him a light sleeper, this noise had been so loud it would have woken anybody and what was it what was going on—

Then he heard the steady patter of rain on the window and relaxed ever so slightly, his breathing evening out. Another thunderstorm. Of course. Still, he kept looking around, just to be sure—that thunder had been very, very, loud.

_ It’s dark—is the power out?  _ his tired brain wondered before he remembered that his room was dark because it was three in the morning—according to the blinking numbers of the clock on his nightstand, anyway—and that the tower wasn’t connected to a normal electricity grid anyway.

Another crack of thunder, and he sat straight up, blankets spilling around his shoulders. If he’d still had his old heart monitor, it would have been beeping like crazy right now.

_ Calm down. It’s just a storm. _

His eyes darted to the window as lightning flashed, followed by another low rumbling. No, he wouldn’t be going back to sleep anytime soon. And definitely not now that the Hulk was also awake and growling at every  _ danger _ that came with the bolts of thunder—it was probably better not to let his guard down.

As he watched the rain soak over his windows, Bruce became aware of quiet footsteps in the hall outside. One of the team, it had to be; no one else was here except JARVIS and whatever appliances Tony had recently engineered to achieve sentience.

He got out of bed, shivering a little at the cold floor, and crept over to the door, poking his head out into the dark hallway.

There was someone there, heading in the opposite direction of his room—probably going to the elevator—and just barely recognizable in the pitch black. The figure’s height alone ruled out most of the occupants of the Tower, and then when he rubbed a hand over his head, long hair was pushed aside.

Thor.

Bruce thought about calling out to him, but decided against it when he saw Thor stop walking and slump back against the wall. If he’d looked like that, he wouldn’t want anybody to bother him, either.

Thor’s face was heavy with exhaustion, as though he hadn’t slept all night, and he was still leaning most of his weight on his right side. Bruce could see the bandage peeking out from the leg of his pajama pants—so Thor had been asleep, or had tried to be.

He knew that pretty much all of them had their own… well, issues, more than even S.H.I.E.L.D.’s highly comprehensive filing system could cover. Most people wouldn’t know it to look at them, but there were days when Tony would disappear into his workshop for hours on end, when Steve would tear apart half the gym without realizing, when Natasha wouldn’t talk to any of them unless a mission required it, when Clint would apparently vanish off the face of the earth, and when Bruce… everyone knew what happened to Bruce.

Thor, though… he was still a bit of a mystery, even after all the time he’d spent at the Tower. But he’d lived for a thousand years—that couldn’t come without a catch.

As he watched, Thor lifted his head out of his hands, his eyes pressed shut. Lightning flashed outside at the same moment as a tear slid down his face.

_ Oh. Oh, hell. _

Were these thunderstorms somehow tied to Thor himself? Had he been the source of the last one, too?

Bruce didn’t know, and he didn’t think it would be a good idea to ask. In the most understated way of putting it, Bruce Banner was not a therapist, and if he tried to talk to Thor, the teammate he probably knew the least well of any of them except maybe Clint…  _ yeah, that would go well. _ He’d probably end up making Thor feel worse, with his luck.

None of the Avengers liked going to S.H.I.E.L.D. Medical if they could help it, and since Bruce had become their unofficial field medic, he didn’t have a problem patching up their physical wounds, but anything more than that? Nope. No way. Not his training.

As quietly as he could, Bruce backed up and shut his bedroom door behind him. If Thor had heard, there wasn’t any sound from the hallway. Just rain rolling down the windows.

He crawled back into bed, but the constant boom of thunder kept him from falling back asleep.

* * *

The third time was during their next call to assemble, when Bruce had been steadily keeping the previous incidents out of his mind (every time he’d seen Thor, he’d thought about bringing it up, but the Asgardian always seemed so carefree that it almost made Bruce doubt whether or not what he’d seen had been real).

Tony was landing the quinjet on a wide, flat section of roof in the rows of half-abandoned warehouses that was apparently the headquarters for whatever supervillain planned on wreaking havoc that afternoon. Tony didn’t seem worried, if the music blaring from the jet’s speakers was any indication.

Natasha and Clint were sitting beside each other across from Bruce, the former nodding her head to the beat of the music and the latter counting the arrows in his quiver. Bruce himself was twisting one of the buttons on his jacket, wondering if he’d have the chance to change out of it or if it would get destroyed like almost every item of clothing he’d ever owned. 

In the back of the quinjet, Steve and Thor had been talking, but as the jet hit the roof with a muffled bump, Steve grabbed his shield and crossed to the front.

He started talking, probably laying out the plan and giving everyone their orders, but Bruce wasn’t really listening. What instructions did the Hulk really need beyond “smash this, not that?”

“—and Bruce, you’ll stay here and be ready on coms. Everyone—”

Bruce tilted his head. “Wait, you don’t need…” He made a few gestures that didn’t really mean anything, but Steve apparently got it.

“No, no Hulk. This mission depends on the element of surprise—” He threw a meaningful look at Tony, who rolled his eyes but turned down the music. “—but definitely do stay in contact in case we need backup. If we’re wrong about the numbers, this could get ugly fast. So, everyone got it?”

“Aye, aye, Captain.” Clint jumped off his seat and shouldered his bow. Natasha joined him at the door with what was probably supposed to be an encouraging smile at Bruce, who returned it uneasily.

The doors opened and the team stepped outside and into the bright sunlight. Bruce followed them—he’d go back inside the jet once they were gone, but he’d prefer to minimize the amount of time he had to spend alone, waiting, with almost no information. 

_ No matter which me is fighting, I don’t ever know what’s going on. How very heroic. _

The Iron Man suit unfolded and enveloped Tony, sliding out and attaching along his arms and legs in an almost hypnotizing way before the helmet slid shut and the eye slits glowed. It whirred as his head turned toward Thor.

“Come on, Blondie, we’re on air support this time. You want east or west exit?”

“I’ll take the west.” Thor grinned. “It has two doors instead of one, and you might get overwhelmed.”

“Fine. See if you ever get any cool Stark technology again.” Tony lifted off, hovering a few feet above the ground.

Thor shrugged and slung Mjolnir off his belt, the runes on its edge glinting in the sun. Unlike Bruce, he actually enjoyed these fights—it must have been hard for someone so powerful to let off steam on such a breakable little planet any other way. He swung the hammer around and around in his hand, and Bruce could practically see the energy humming through him.

And that’s when the rain started.

It was that sudden; one moment the sky was blue and cloudless, and the next, it had opened up in a pounding deluge. Both Tony and Clint swore, and Steve lifted his shield above his head as a makeshift umbrella that Natasha darted underneath as well. 

Thor stared up at the clouds, rain plastering his hair to his face, and then back down at the hand that still gripped the hammer. Lightning scissored through the sky with a crackle, illuminating his widened eyes.

Bruce wrapped his arms around himself, getting more and more drenched by the second—

_ BOOM. _

The thunder was as loud as gunfire, and he didn’t even have time to take a breath or try to slow his heartbeat before his clothes were ripping and his body was stretching and growing, and he felt a roar tear out of his mouth as more thunder cracked and—

Bruce woke up two hours later, soaking wet and completely naked in a pile of what had probably used to be one of the warehouses.

* * *

The fourth time was a full week later—Thor had evidently connected the dots and seemed to be trying his best to avoid any more storms, even if that meant his hammer lay abandoned on the dresser for quite some time.

Once the rest of the team had found Bruce after that last… eventful mission, Tony had filled him in on what had happened: the bad guys had been stopped with some very hasty adjustments to Steve’s element-of-surprise plan, no one had gotten hurt or electrocuted, by some sheer miracle, and (this was said in a delighted voice) Tony had spent most of the fight chasing after the Hulk, who “didn’t even try to smash me this time, Bruce! I mean, okay, he did throw a Dumpster at me, but it’s a learning curve. We’ll just have to try again when you’re up for it!”

Which did not help Bruce’s headache.

At the moment, both he and Thor were alone in the Tower together for possibly the first time ever. Usually, there was more of the team around, but Natasha and Clint had to report to S.H.I.E.L.D. for some protocol thing, Tony had a business meeting, and Steve had left an hour ago on one of his lone motorcycle rides.

So Bruce had taken over a chair in the living room, intending to read or do something at least halfway productive, but he’d barely sat down when he heard it.

It was distant, it was quiet (at least for now), but it was unmistakably the sound of thunder rumbling.

And as Bruce looked up, hoping that he’d been imagining things, raindrops began to plop down against the living room windows.

_ Maybe this is a  _ normal  _ thunderstorm. Those do happen. Maybe this was even on the weather forecast that JARVIS likes to give but I never pay attention to. It’s not as strong as the other ones were, I don’t think. _

A few minutes passed, Bruce trying to focus on the words in front of him, but slowly but surely the storm became too intense to ignore. Wind whipped and howled outside, picking up the pattering raindrops and spinning them into a full-force downpour, and every crack of lightning was neon-bright against the ominous sky.

At the next boom of thunder, Bruce was out of the room and heading for the place Thor was most likely to be.

The door to the training room was open, so Bruce lost no time in rushing inside.

Thor was standing in the center of the room, breathing heavily and holding his fists at his sides. He had apparently tried out the Steve Rogers method for alleviating stress, as four or five destroyed punching bags littered the floor around him, but it didn’t seem to have worked all that well. His eyes were flickering like the lightning-filled clouds outside and he gritted his teeth as thunder rumbled, actually shaking with the effort of trying—and failing—to hold it back.

Bruce froze a step away from the door. “Thor?”

Thor opened his eyes, which filled with panic when he spotted Bruce. “Banner? No, it isn’t safe to be in here right now—” He broke off as a shudder went through his body, and thunder boomed in response. His breath was picking up, and lightning was actually starting to jump from his hands.

“Got that.” Bruce cast a nervous look at the ceiling—the storm sounded like it was right on top of them, and no surprise. “Just—try to calm down, maybe that—”

Thor shook his head, faster and faster until a noise wrenched itself from his throat and every window shattered, lightning shooting through the room. There was barely enough time for Bruce to yell the words, “Thor, watch out!” before a mighty blast rocked the building and suddenly the ceiling was collapsing above them.

Bruce probably cried out, but it was lost in the sudden avalanche of rubble as everything in the room was swallowed up and caved in.

Silence.

Darkness.

Bruce opened his eyes, then had to blink several times to get rid of the dust. He couldn’t move his hand to rub it away—it was trapped. So was his other hand. Both of his arms, too. And legs and—

_ Oh god _ . He was completely trapped.

_ Don’t freak out don’t freak out don’t freak out.  _ Even if freaking out would probably get this debris off of him sooner, he really didn’t want to cause any more damage to the Tower.

There was a tiny square of light above his eye where some of the broken pieces of ceiling had shifted, and that was a little comforting. He focused on that as he willed his heartbeat to calm down.

Also, the storm seemed to have stopped, so that helped too. 

As though thought had summoned him, Thor’s voice called out from somewhere in this pile of what used to be the ceiling of the training room. It was rougher than usual and choked with dust, but he could still make out: “Banner? Are you all right?”

“Ye—” Bruce cleared his throat and tried again, louder. “Yeah! I’m just… stuck.”

_ Don’t freak out don’t freak out don’t freak out. _

There was a pause before Thor admitted, “I am stuck as well.” A slow breath. “Sorry about this.”

“Hey, it’s okay. I know you didn’t do it on purpose. Believe me, I know what it’s like.” He gave a halfhearted laugh that Thor did not reciprocate. “But, uh. I have noticed you’ve been a little, uh, sparkier than usual recently? Is everything okay?”

“Yes, I did notice that.” For a moment, Bruce thought Thor wasn’t going to continue, and then: “I don’t know what manner of trickery that enemy used on me when I was captured that affects me so, but I’m glad we destroyed that base when we did. Does it… I apologize if it’s been… bothering you.”

Bruce bit his lip, then regretted it once the dust got in his mouth. “It’s really more the Other Guy than me.”  _ Lies. All lies. _

“It’s fine.” There was a shifting noise, as though Thor were moving around under the rubble. “You know, I used to be afraid of it too.”

“Really?” Bruce couldn’t quite keep the skepticism from his voice.

Thor huffed a breath that wasn’t exactly a laugh. “Yes. It was a lot to handle when I was younger—I think it would be for any child—and I didn’t like how it made other people act around me. How things would get destroyed whenever I would…you’ve seen. Even my brother—” Thor stopped himself with an awkward cough. “Anyway. It was my mother who helped me to understand how it wasn’t a frightening thing to be powerful, as long as I learned how to use it the right way.”

Bruce smiled to himself.

“Then, of course, my father gave me Mjolnir.” Thor paused, and there was another shifting sound from the rubble. “And I haven’t had any problems controlling my power until…” Thor didn’t really need to finish the sentence. Their current situation was self-explanatory.

Bruce made a decision and started wiggling around, dislodging some of the broken pieces of ceiling that held him down. “Well, don’t worry. Once we’re out of here, we can fix this.” What sounded like a metal pipe clanged down in the spot where his foot had been as he continued moving.

“Banner? Bruce, what in Hel are you doing?”

Bruce ignored him, squirming a pathway through the wreckage—and narrowly avoiding getting sliced or crushed by the sharp and heavy parts—until he found the thunder god buried three or four feet under.

He cleared away another chunk of ceiling and Thor blinked up at him, covered in dust but unhurt.

“Bruce, what—”

He was interrupted as Bruce wrapped his arms around him, closing the distance until his head was pressed on Thor’s chest. Hardly a breath had passed before Thor was returning the embrace, each of them shielding the other from the chunks of wreckage.

And if there was a little more static electricity than normal, Bruce didn’t mind. The rest of the team would get them out sooner or later, and right now Thor’s arms were warm with the lightning coursing through his veins.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
